My Living Circumstances

So I live in a cement factory. It’s a sizeable operation, employing something like 50 people. The name, Supsangdao, translates into something like the “Starlight Asset” Cement Company. A pretty enough name, but my host father tells me it’s an homage to the village his factory started in, called “Sangdao”. The factory is placed on land that was originally an asset of the factory when it was in the village Sangdao. And so it is, some 15 years later, that the asset has become the base, and the old factory is an asset of the new business. It’s pretty bustling, but also located in country, so the occasional wandering cow needs to be chased off the grounds. There were six dogs living on the factory but that number has gone up to nine with the birth of some delightful puppies. Supsangdao is located about a dozen kilometers out of Nan, the town where I do all my work/teaching/hanging out/etc.

My host father’s a pretty successful businessman, and while the cement factory is certainly his main income, he also owns a small motel and a few hectares of rubber farms. He’s pretty knowledgeable about economics, and we’ll frequently discuss the trade within Thailand and between Southeast Asia. He’s been asked to lecture at conferences as Thailand prepares to join ASEAN. ASEAN (the Alliance of South-East Asian Nations) is aiming to be something like the European Union within the region, and Thailand will become a member in two years. This his has led to a number of interesting developments, which will be later addressed when I describe my time as a teacher.

My host mother manages much of the financial side of my father’s various businesses, and works as hard as (if not perhaps harder than) him. She still makes time to be a compassionate, determined, and totally All-Star Mom.

Seriously, she’s just great.

My average day has been something like what follows:

1.     Wake up at 6 or 7, depending on whether I’m studying at the farming university or teaching at Satrisinan, a local high school.

2.     Eat the breakfast with my host parents that my mom has cooked. Because they usually consist of a couple of dishes with meat and vegetables, Thai breakfasts are pretty hardy, and being Thai food, are also delicious.

3.     Get a lift to the Farming University or high school with a driver for the factory. I almost always go with Lung Virat “Uncle Virat” (not the Virat from the previous post, which was a typo by me that will be corrected soon. I traveled to Mei Sai and Chiang Rai with Note, Virat’s son. They’re a father-son team working at the factory, and that is as delightful as it sounds). Lung Virat doesn’t speak a word of English and has an incredibly thick Thai accent. We always try to make conversation and neither has any idea what the other is saying. But he’s quite friendly and an outstanding driver and could easily be a member of the Vin Diesel’s crew in any of the Fast and Furious movies. 

4.     Arrive at the Farming University at 8:30 or my host aunt’s shop at 7:30. My father’s sister owns a hardware story about a block and half from the high school, which my host brothers use as a place to store clothes, motorbikes, and really anything else they might need for school. When I get dropped off there I usually walk to Satrisinan from there.

5.     If I’m at Satrisinan, the high school, I’ll generally sit back and watch the general assembly, which begins at 8:00. It’s fascinating and will be discussed when I talk about teaching. If I’m at Ratchamongala, the Farming University, this is when my work begins. The past couple weeks I’ve been working on growing mushroom. It’s a lot more interesting than it sounds and can sometimes be pretty fun. I’ll discuss the art of mushrooming in more depth when I write about the Farming University.

6.     I’m sure this layered timeline is a little difficult to follow, but it now gets much simpler. Back at Satrisinan, the high school, classes have officially begun. The schedule of the teacher I work with and occasionally fill in for is different everyday, so I might have as many two or three classes between 9 and 12, but some days there might be none at all.
At Ratchamongala, I mushroom until whatever work I’m done is assigned, almost always by 11 am. When the work is done, I head back to the English department office, where I check email, read, practice my Thai, and help correct tests and papers for the teachers.

7.     Lunch Time! Regardless of location, I eat at 12. If I’m at Satrisinan, I’ll eat at the cafeteria, which has a pretty wide selection of Thai food. As Thai food it’s satisfactory, and as school food goes, it’s top-notch. Tons of options, from noodle soup to chicken skewers with rice as well as a sizeable selection of desserts.
Lunch at Ratchamongala is rarely at Ratchamongala, since my advisor in the English department takes me out, often with at least some of the other teachers. I generally let the teachers pick a restaurant and have yet to be disappointed.

8.     Upon finishing lunch, I try very hard to get in a nap. Occasionally my schedule at Ratchamongala or Satrisinan prevents this, a wretched ordeal for all involved.

9.     If there are classes to teach, I teach them. If there are mushrooms to grow, I grow them. Often I still end up with a couple of hours of free time until 4 PM, when both schools finish.

10. As I’ve mentioned above, my house is a bit of a hike through heavy and Asian traffic (yes, the drivers satisfy every stereotype you have about them). Therefor I generally try to kill time in Nan, which is not too difficult. I visit parks, read at coffee shops, or exercise at the sports stadium. The Nan Stadium is a wonderful place. It’s relatively quiet, filled with trees, and is truly a community asset. Every time I’ve gone there to bike or run it’s pretty busy with people using the track, swimming in the pool, playing football (sorry, soccer) on the field, or participating in fitness classes at the gymnasium. It’s really a quality place and I manage to get there almost every day.

Nan is a really swell place to be, and certainly deserving of its own blog post. People are incredibly friendly, though sometimes a bit shy around farangs (white foreigners) regardless of how well they speak English. While I don’t have quite enough Thai to get past basic introductions, I’ve found that if I approach someone in Thai and they speak at least a bit of English, it’s usually enough to open them up. I’m curious if this is the case for any of the other YE’s in places with limited English.

11. I mentioned that my host father owns a motel. It’s quite close to the stadium and I have a room permanently under my name where I can shower and change after going for a run. The Dao-Lu-Aung (Yellow Flower) motel is not the Four Seasons by any means, but it’s nice to have a place I can be alone and decompress without having to bike home.

12. At this point it’s maybe 6:30 or 7 PM. I meet my host family at the motel, and we go out for dinner. Because my host mom and dad are running the factory they don’t have time to cook so I have eaten out almost every single night in Thailand. This isn’t much of a problem because prices in Thailand easily accommodate such a lifestyle, I get a bit of freedom in what I can eat, and I also get some control over how much I eat. The other exchange students I’ve met here have stories of host families shoving piles of food at them every meal. I’m entirely comfortable with the fact that I’m going to get fat (for Pete’s sake, I’m eating Thai food for a year. It would be a sin not to get fat), but it’s nice that I can at least stave off the inevitable.

13. We head home around eight, later if my host family runs errands. I’ll diddle on the computer, avoid updating my blog, do some reading and go to bed.

There you have it, a day in the life of Frank Meyer. It’s occasionally a bit boring, usually filled with fresh experiences, and every second of it is wonderful in different ways.